Unsung History14 Mar 2022

Babe Didrikson Zaharias

Born in 1911, Mildred Ella Didrikson Zaharias, who went by the nickname “Babe,” was a phenomenal, and confident athlete. Babe won Olympic gold in track and field, was an All American player in basketball, pitched in exhibition games in Major League Baseball, and won 17 straight women’s amateur golf tournaments, before turning pro and co-founding the LPGA.In a society that didn’t welcome women like Babe, she nonetheless forged her own path and won the hearts of fans along the way.

I’m joined in this episode by History Professor Dr. Corye Perez Beene, author of the biweekly newsletter Awesome American Sports, who makes the case that Babe was the greatest American athlete who has ever lived.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is: "Babe Didrikson,” National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Object number NPG.97.211. The image is in the public domain.

Sources:

Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, by Susan E. Cayleff, Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1996.
This life I've led: my autobiography, by Babe Didrikson Zaharias. New York: Barnes, 1955.
Babe Conquers the World: The Legendary Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, by Rich Wallace and Sandra Neil Wallace, New York: Calkins Creek, 2014.
“Remembering A 'Babe' Sports Fans Shouldn't Forget,” All Things Considered, NPR, June 26, 2011.
“The 'greatest all-sport athlete' who helped revolutionize women's golf,” by Ben Morse, CNN, September 8, 2020.
“Babe Zaharias Dies; Athlete Had Cancer,” The New York Times, September 28, 1956

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(230)

Jane Addams, Hull House, and Chicago's Nineteenth Ward

In the fall of 1889, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr opened Hull House on Chicago’s Near West Side, full of good intentions to help the poor people of the neighborhood. They were a force for good, p...

10 Aug 46min

Buddy Bradley

Buddy Bradley, born in the Jim Crow South in 1905, made his way to Harlem at age 16 where he learned to tap dance and became a chorus boy. He was sought out on Broadway as both teacher and choreograph...

27 Jul 50min

The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League

During World War II, afraid that major league baseball would need to pause while men were overseas fighting, Philip K. Wrigley, chewing gum mogul and owner of the Chicago Cubs, spearheaded a new profe...

13 Jul 54min

The Declaration of Independence

The Continental Congress voted to break from Great Britain on July 2, 1776, and approved the text of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, but it took weeks for the news to spread throughout the ...

29 Jun 48min

The Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building

The Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building loom large in the American imagination, symbolizing the conflicting ideas of liberty and empire; their meanings and characters have shifted over tim...

15 Jun 38min

An American History of Purses

Today the US handbag market is estimated to be nearly $12 billion, with most of the purchasing done by women, but into the early 20th Century purses hadn’t yet become the nearly-exclusive domain of wo...

1 Jun 40min

The Lady Bird Special

On the morning of Tuesday, October 6, 1964, the Lady Bird Special, a 19-car train carrying First Lady Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, her supporters, members of the press, and a security detail, departed...

18 Mai 41min

Policing Slavery & Black Rebellion in the American South

Enslaved Africans were forcibly shipped to Virginia starting in 1619 in response to a severe labor shortage. From the beginning, enslaved laborers resisted by fleeing and through violence, and white e...

4 Mai 50min